Is the law of conservation of energy right?

James S Saint wrote:The cluster (gathering) of the noise is the particle. A crowd is not people, but rather a gathering of people. A human body is not chemicals, but rather a gathering of chemicals (in a particular order).

I rewrite your analogy as follows:

If a particle is the cluster (gathering) of the noise, and the crowd is - rather (!) - a gathering of people and the human body - rather (!) a gathering of chemicals (in a particular order), then a particle must - rather (!) - be like a human body or like a crowd, whereas the noise must - rather (!) - be like chemicals (in a particular order) or like people.

Is the universe an isolated system, thus something like a thermodynamic system enclosed by rigid immovable walls through which neither matter nor energy can pass?

Yes, exactly like Darwin's Natural Selection, the law of conservation of energy is a fundamental principle of the universe.

"Science is entirely Faith Based.... Obama is Muslim....Evil is the opposition to life (e-v-i-l <=> l-i-v-e ... and not by accident). Without evil there could be no life.", James S. Saint."The Holocaust was the fault of the Jews; The Holocaust was not genocide", Kriswest "A Tortoise is a Turtle", Wizard" Hitler didn't create the Nazis. In reality, the Judists did ... for a purpose of their own. Hitler was merely one they chose to head it up after they discovered the Judist betrayal in WW1, their "Judas Iscariot";James S Saint.These just keep getting funnier.

Your statement is merely religious, theological, pantheistical. Stop referring to your god(s). Try to leave your false god Darwin and the 19th century. In addition: Darwin is not the issue in this thread.

Arminius wrote:Newton’s physics was "true" till Clausius’ second law ("entropy") of thermodynamics, in any case till Planck’s constant, Planck’s quantum theory, and Einstein’s (actually Hilbert’s) relativity theory. The "truth" about dynamics and about time changed. Both "truths" are very typical for the Occidental culture. One of the both led to the knowledge that entropy and irreversibility make probabilities and statistics more relevant, more "true"; the other one of the both led to the knowledge that time is more organic than anorganic, more historical than physical, more chronic than mathematical.

So what changed was a pattern of the Occidental way of life, experience, the kind of epistemology, the interpretation of "truth", also of "subjectivity" and "objectivity". The cultural goal, aim, target, object came closer.

Since Newton, the assumption of constant mass — the counterpart of constant force — has had uncontested validity. But the Quantum theory of Planck, and the conclusions of Niels Bohr therefrom as to the fine structure of atoms, which experimental experience had rendered necessary, have destroyed this assumption. Every self-contained system possesses, besides kinetic energy, an energy of radiant heat which is inseparable from it and therefore cannot be represented purely by the concept of mass. For if mass is defined by living energy it is ipso facto no longer constant with reference to thermodynamic state. Nevertheless, it is impossible to fit the theory of quanta into the group of hypotheses constituting the " classical" mechanics of the Baroque; moreover, along with the principle of causal continuity, the basis of the Infinitesimal Calculus founded by Leibniz is threatened (1). But, if these are serious enough doubts, the ruthlessly cynical hypothesis of the Relativity theory strikes to the very heart of dynamics. Supported by the experiments of A. A. Michelson, which showed that the velocity of light remains unaffected by the motion of the medium, and prepared mathematically by Lorentz and Minkowski, its specific tendency is to destroy the notion of absolute time. Astronomical discoveries (and here present-day scientists are seriously deceiving themselves) can neither establish nor refute it. "Correct" and "incorrect" are not the criteria whereby such assumptions are to be tested; the question is whether, in the chaos of involved and artificial ideas that has been produced by the innumerable hypotheses of Radioactivity and Thermodynamics, it can hold its own as a useable hypothesis or not. But however this may be, it has abolished the constancy of those •physical quantities into the definition of which time has entered, and unlike the antique statics, the Western dynamics knows only such quantities. Absolute measures of length and rigid bodies are no more. And with this the possibility of absolute quantitative delimitations and therefore the "classical" concept of mass as the constant ratio between force and acceleration fall to the ground — just after the quantum of action, a product of energy and time, had been set up as a new constant. (1) See M. Planck, Entstehung und bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie (192.0), pp. 17-2.5.

If we make it clear to ourselves that the atomic ideas of Rutherford and Bohr (2) signify nothing but this, that the numerical results of observations have suddenly been provided with a picture of a planetary world within the atom, instead of that of atom-swarms hitherto favoured; if we observe how rapidly card-houses of hypothesis are run up nowadays, every contradiction being immediately covered up by a new hurried hypothesis; if we reflect on how little heed is paid to the fact that these images contradict one another and the "classical" Baroque mechanics alike, we cannot but realize that the great style of ideation is at an end and that, as in architecture and the arts of form, a sort of craft-art of hypothesis-building has taken its place. Only our extreme maestria in experimental technique — true child of its century — hides the collapse of the symbolism.

(2) Which in many cases have led to the supposition that the "actual existence" of atoms has now at last been proved — a singular throw-back to the materialism of the preceding generation.

Amongst these symbols of decline, the most conspicuous is the notion of Entropy, which forms the subject of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law, that of the conservation of energy, is the plain formulation of the essence of dynamics — not to say of the constitution of the West-European soul, to which Nature is necessarily visible only in the form of a contrapuntal-dynamic causality (as against the static-plastic causality of Aristotle). The basic element of the Faustian world-picture is not the Attitude but the Deed and, mechanically considered, the Process, and this law merely puts the mathematical character of these processes into form as variables and constants. But the Second Law goes deeper, and shows a bias in Nature-happenings which is in no wise imposed a priori by the conceptual fundamentals of dynamics.

Mathematically, Entropy is represented by a quantity which is fixed by the momentary state of a self-contained system of bodies and under all physical and chemical alterations can only increase, never diminish; in the most favourable conditions it remains unchanged. Entropy, like Force and Will, is something which (to anyone for whom this form-world is accessible at all) is inwardly clear and meaningful, but is formulated differently by every different authority and never satisfactorily by any. Here again, the intellect breaks down where the world-feeling demands expression.

Nature-processes in general have been classified as irreversible and reversible, according as entropy is increased or not. In any process of the first kind, free energy is converted into bound energy, and if this dead energy is to be turned once more into living, this can only occur through the simultaneous binding of a further quantum of living energy in some second process; the best-known example is the combustion of coal — that is, the conversion of the living energy stored up in it into heat bound by the gas form of the carbon dioxide, if the latent energy of water is to be translated into steam-pressure and thereafter into motion. It follows that in the world as a whole entropy continually increases; that is, the dynamic system is manifestly approaching to some final state, whatever this may be. Examples of the irreversible processes are conduction of heat, diffusion, friction, emission of light and chemical reactions; of reversible, gravitation, electric oscillations, electromagnetic waves and sound-waves.

What has never hitherto been fully felt, and what leads me to regard the Entropy theory (1850) as the beginning of the destruction of that masterpiece of Western intelligence, the old dynamic physics, is the deep opposition of theory and actuality which is here for the first time introduced into theory itself. The First Law had drawn the strict picture of a causal Nature-happening, but the Second Law by introducing irreversibility has for the first time brought into the mechanical-logical domain a tendency belonging to immediate life and thus in fundamental contradiction with the very essence of that domain.

If the Entropy theory is followed out to its conclusion, it results, firstly, that in theory all processes must be reversible — which is one of the basic postulates of dynamics and is reasserted with all rigour in the law of the Conservation of Energy — but, secondly, that in actuality processes of Nature in their entirety are irreversible. Not even under the artificial conditions of laboratory experiment can the simplest process be exactly reversed, that is, a state once passed cannot be re-established. Nothing is more significant of the present condition of systematics than the introduction of the hypotheses of "elementary disorder" for the purpose of smoothing-out the contradiction between intellectual postulate and actual experience. The "smallest particles" of a body (an image, no more) throughout perform reversible processes, but in actual things the smallest particles are in disorder and mutually interfere; and so the irreversible process that alone is experienced by the observer is linked with increase of entropy by taking the mean probabilities of occurrences. And thus theory becomes a chapter of the Calculus of Probabilities, and in lieu of exact we have statistical methods.

Evidently, the significance of this has passed unnoticed. Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to Destiny and Incident and not to the world of laws and timeless causality. As everyone knows, statistics serve above all to characterize political and economic, that is, historical, developments. In the "classical" mechanics of Galileo and Newton there would have been no room for them. And if, now, suddenly the contents of that field are supposed to be understood and understandable only statistically and under the aspect of Probability — instead of under that of the a piori exactitude which the Baroque thinkers unanimously demanded — what does it mean? It means that the object of understanding is ourselves. The Nature "known" in this wise is the Nature that we know by way of living experience, that we live in ourselves. What theory asserts (and, being itself, must assert) — to wit, this ideal irreversibility that never happens in actuality — represents a relic of the old severe intellectual form, the great Baroque tradition that had contrapuntal music for twin sister. But the resort to statistics shows that the force that that tradition regulated and made effective is exhausted. Becoming and Become, Destiny and Causality, historical and natural-science elements are beginning to be confused. Formulas of life, growth, age, direction and death are crowding up.

That is what, from this point of view, irreversibility in world-processes has to mean. It is the expression, no longer of the physical t but of genuine historical, inwardly-experienced Time, which is identical with Destiny.

Baroque physics was, root and branch, a strict systematic and remained so for as long as its structure was not racked by theories like these, as long as its field was absolutely free from anything that expressed accident and mere probability. But directly these theories come up, it becomes physiognomic. "The course of the world" is followed out. The idea of the end of the world appears, under the veil of formulas that are no longer in their essence formulas at all. Something Goethian has entered into physics — and if we understand the deeper significance of Goethe's passionate polemic against Newton in the "Farbenlehre" we shall realize the full weight of what this means. For therein intuitive vision was arguing against reason, life against death, creative image against normative law. The critical form-world of Nature-knowledge came out of Nature-feeling, God-feeling, as the evoked contrary. Here, at the end of the Late period, it has reached the maximal distance and is turning to come home.

So, once more, the imaging-power that is the efficient in dynamics conjures up the old great symbol of Faustian man's historical passion, Care — the out-look into the farthest far of past and future, the back-looking study of history, the foreseeing state, the confessions and introspections, the bells that sounded over all our country-sides and measured the passing of Life. The ethos of the word Time, as we alone feel it, as instrumental music alone and no statue- plastic can carry it, is directed upon an aim. This aim has been figured in every life-image that the West has conceived — as the Third Kingdom, as the New Age, as the task of mankind, as the issue of evolution. And it is figured, as the destined end-state of all Faustian "Nature" in Entropy.

Directional feeling, a relation of past and future, is implicit already in the mythic concept of force on which the whole of this dogmatic form-world rests, and in the description of natural processes it emerges distinct. It would not be too much, therefore, to say that entropy, as the intellectual form in which the infinite sum of nature-events is assembled as a historical and physiognomic unit, tacitly underlay all physical concept-formation from the outset, so that when it came out (as one day it was bound to come out) it was as a "discovery" of scientific induction claiming "support" from all the other theoretical elements of the system. The more dynamics exhausts its inner possibilities as it nears the goal, the more decidedly the historical characters in the picture come to the front and the more insistently the organic necessity of Destiny asserts itself side by side with the inorganic necessity of Causality, and Direction makes itself felt along with capacity and intensity, the factors of pure extension. The course of this process is marked by the appearance of whole series of daring hypotheses, all of like sort, which are only apparently demanded by experimental results and which in fact world-feeling and mythology imagined as long ago as the Gothic age.

Above all, this is manifested in the bizarre hypotheses of atomic disintegration which elucidate the phenomena of radioactivity, and according to which uranium atoms that have kept their essence unaltered, in spite of all external influences, for millions of years and then suddenly without assignable cause explode, scattering their smallest particles over space with velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Only a few individuals in an aggregate of radioactive atoms are struck by Destiny thus, the neighbours being entirely unaffected. Here too, then, is a picture of history and not "Nature," and although statistical methods here also prove to be necessary, one might almost say that in them mathematical number has been replaced by chronological.

With ideas like these, the mythopoetic force of the Faustian soul is returning to its origins. It was at the outset of the Gothic, just at the time when the first mechanical clocks were being built, that the myth of the world's end, Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, arose. It may be that, like all the reputedly old-German myths Ragnarok (whether in the Voluspa form or as the Christian Muspilli) was modelled more or less on Classical and particularly Christian-Apocalyptic motives. Nevertheless, it is the expression and symbol of the Faustian and of no other soul. The Olympian college is historyless, it knows no becoming, no epochal moments, no aim. But the passionate thrust into distance is Faustian. Force, Will, has an aim, and where there is an aim there is for the inquiring eye an end. That which the perspective of oil-painting expressed by means of the vanishing point, the Baroque park by its pint de vue, and analysis by the »th term of an infinite series — the conclusion, that is, of a willed directedness — assumes here the form of the concept. The Faust of the Second Part is dying, for he has reached his goal. What the myth of Götterdammerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of Entropy, signifies today — world's end as completion of an inwardly necessary evolution.

Arminius wrote:Newton’s physics was "true" till Clausius’ second law ("entropy") of thermodynamics, in any case till Planck’s constant, Planck’s quantum theory, and Einstein’s (actually Hilbert’s) relativity theory. The "truth" about dynamics and about time changed. Both "truths" are very typical for the Occidental culture. One of the both led to the knowledge that entropy and irreversibility make probabilities and statistics more relevant, more "true"; the other one of the both led to the knowledge that time is more organic than anorganic, more historical than physical, more chronic than mathematical.

So what changed was a pattern of the Occidental way of life, experience, the kind of epistemology, the interpretation of "truth", also of "subjectivity" and "objectivity". The cultural goal, aim, target, object came closer.

Since Newton, the assumption of constant mass — the counterpart of constant force — has had uncontested validity. But the Quantum theory of Planck, and the conclusions of Niels Bohr therefrom as to the fine structure of atoms, which experimental experience had rendered necessary, have destroyed this assumption. Every self-contained system possesses, besides kinetic energy, an energy of radiant heat which is inseparable from it and therefore cannot be represented purely by the concept of mass. For if mass is defined by living energy it is ipso facto no longer constant with reference to thermodynamic state. Nevertheless, it is impossible to fit the theory of quanta into the group of hypotheses constituting the " classical" mechanics of the Baroque; moreover, along with the principle of causal continuity, the basis of the Infinitesimal Calculus founded by Leibniz is threatened (1). But, if these are serious enough doubts, the ruthlessly cynical hypothesis of the Relativity theory strikes to the very heart of dynamics. Supported by the experiments of A. A. Michelson, which showed that the velocity of light remains unaffected by the motion of the medium, and prepared mathematically by Lorentz and Minkowski, its specific tendency is to destroy the notion of absolute time. Astronomical discoveries (and here present-day scientists are seriously deceiving themselves) can neither establish nor refute it. "Correct" and "incorrect" are not the criteria whereby such assumptions are to be tested; the question is whether, in the chaos of involved and artificial ideas that has been produced by the innumerable hypotheses of Radioactivity and Thermodynamics, it can hold its own as a useable hypothesis or not. But however this may be, it has abolished the constancy of those •physical quantities into the definition of which time has entered, and unlike the antique statics, the Western dynamics knows only such quantities. Absolute measures of length and rigid bodies are no more. And with this the possibility of absolute quantitative delimitations and therefore the "classical" concept of mass as the constant ratio between force and acceleration fall to the ground — just after the quantum of action, a product of energy and time, had been set up as a new constant. (1) See M. Planck, Entstehung und bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie (192.0), pp. 17-2.5.

If we make it clear to ourselves that the atomic ideas of Rutherford and Bohr (2) signify nothing but this, that the numerical results of observations have suddenly been provided with a picture of a planetary world within the atom, instead of that of atom-swarms hitherto favoured; if we observe how rapidly card-houses of hypothesis are run up nowadays, every contradiction being immediately covered up by a new hurried hypothesis; if we reflect on how little heed is paid to the fact that these images contradict one another and the "classical" Baroque mechanics alike, we cannot but realize that the great style of ideation is at an end and that, as in architecture and the arts of form, a sort of craft-art of hypothesis-building has taken its place. Only our extreme maestria in experimental technique — true child of its century — hides the collapse of the symbolism.

(2) Which in many cases have led to the supposition that the "actual existence" of atoms has now at last been proved — a singular throw-back to the materialism of the preceding generation.

Amongst these symbols of decline, the most conspicuous is the notion of Entropy, which forms the subject of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law, that of the conservation of energy, is the plain formulation of the essence of dynamics — not to say of the constitution of the West-European soul, to which Nature is necessarily visible only in the form of a contrapuntal-dynamic causality (as against the static-plastic causality of Aristotle). The basic element of the Faustian world-picture is not the Attitude but the Deed and, mechanically considered, the Process, and this law merely puts the mathematical character of these processes into form as variables and constants. But the Second Law goes deeper, and shows a bias in Nature-happenings which is in no wise imposed a priori by the conceptual fundamentals of dynamics.

Mathematically, Entropy is represented by a quantity which is fixed by the momentary state of a self-contained system of bodies and under all physical and chemical alterations can only increase, never diminish; in the most favourable conditions it remains unchanged. Entropy, like Force and Will, is something which (to anyone for whom this form-world is accessible at all) is inwardly clear and meaningful, but is formulated differently by every different authority and never satisfactorily by any. Here again, the intellect breaks down where the world-feeling demands expression.

Nature-processes in general have been classified as irreversible and reversible, according as entropy is increased or not. In any process of the first kind, free energy is converted into bound energy, and if this dead energy is to be turned once more into living, this can only occur through the simultaneous binding of a further quantum of living energy in some second process; the best-known example is the combustion of coal — that is, the conversion of the living energy stored up in it into heat bound by the gas form of the carbon dioxide, if the latent energy of water is to be translated into steam-pressure and thereafter into motion. It follows that in the world as a whole entropy continually increases; that is, the dynamic system is manifestly approaching to some final state, whatever this may be. Examples of the irreversible processes are conduction of heat, diffusion, friction, emission of light and chemical reactions; of reversible, gravitation, electric oscillations, electromagnetic waves and sound-waves.

What has never hitherto been fully felt, and what leads me to regard the Entropy theory (1850) as the beginning of the destruction of that masterpiece of Western intelligence, the old dynamic physics, is the deep opposition of theory and actuality which is here for the first time introduced into theory itself. The First Law had drawn the strict picture of a causal Nature-happening, but the Second Law by introducing irreversibility has for the first time brought into the mechanical-logical domain a tendency belonging to immediate life and thus in fundamental contradiction with the very essence of that domain.

If the Entropy theory is followed out to its conclusion, it results, firstly, that in theory all processes must be reversible — which is one of the basic postulates of dynamics and is reasserted with all rigour in the law of the Conservation of Energy — but, secondly, that in actuality processes of Nature in their entirety are irreversible. Not even under the artificial conditions of laboratory experiment can the simplest process be exactly reversed, that is, a state once passed cannot be re-established. Nothing is more significant of the present condition of systematics than the introduction of the hypotheses of "elementary disorder" for the purpose of smoothing-out the contradiction between intellectual postulate and actual experience. The "smallest particles" of a body (an image, no more) throughout perform reversible processes, but in actual things the smallest particles are in disorder and mutually interfere; and so the irreversible process that alone is experienced by the observer is linked with increase of entropy by taking the mean probabilities of occurrences. And thus theory becomes a chapter of the Calculus of Probabilities, and in lieu of exact we have statistical methods.

Evidently, the significance of this has passed unnoticed. Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to Destiny and Incident and not to the world of laws and timeless causality. As everyone knows, statistics serve above all to characterize political and economic, that is, historical, developments. In the "classical" mechanics of Galileo and Newton there would have been no room for them. And if, now, suddenly the contents of that field are supposed to be understood and understandable only statistically and under the aspect of Probability — instead of under that of the a piori exactitude which the Baroque thinkers unanimously demanded — what does it mean? It means that the object of understanding is ourselves. The Nature "known" in this wise is the Nature that we know by way of living experience, that we live in ourselves. What theory asserts (and, being itself, must assert) — to wit, this ideal irreversibility that never happens in actuality — represents a relic of the old severe intellectual form, the great Baroque tradition that had contrapuntal music for twin sister. But the resort to statistics shows that the force that that tradition regulated and made effective is exhausted. Becoming and Become, Destiny and Causality, historical and natural-science elements are beginning to be confused. Formulas of life, growth, age, direction and death are crowding up.

That is what, from this point of view, irreversibility in world-processes has to mean. It is the expression, no longer of the physical t but of genuine historical, inwardly-experienced Time, which is identical with Destiny.

Baroque physics was, root and branch, a strict systematic and remained so for as long as its structure was not racked by theories like these, as long as its field was absolutely free from anything that expressed accident and mere probability. But directly these theories come up, it becomes physiognomic. "The course of the world" is followed out. The idea of the end of the world appears, under the veil of formulas that are no longer in their essence formulas at all. Something Goethian has entered into physics — and if we understand the deeper significance of Goethe's passionate polemic against Newton in the "Farbenlehre" we shall realize the full weight of what this means. For therein intuitive vision was arguing against reason, life against death, creative image against normative law. The critical form-world of Nature-knowledge came out of Nature-feeling, God-feeling, as the evoked contrary. Here, at the end of the Late period, it has reached the maximal distance and is turning to come home.

So, once more, the imaging-power that is the efficient in dynamics conjures up the old great symbol of Faustian man's historical passion, Care — the out-look into the farthest far of past and future, the back-looking study of history, the foreseeing state, the confessions and introspections, the bells that sounded over all our country-sides and measured the passing of Life. The ethos of the word Time, as we alone feel it, as instrumental music alone and no statue- plastic can carry it, is directed upon an aim. This aim has been figured in every life-image that the West has conceived — as the Third Kingdom, as the New Age, as the task of mankind, as the issue of evolution. And it is figured, as the destined end-state of all Faustian "Nature" in Entropy.

Directional feeling, a relation of past and future, is implicit already in the mythic concept of force on which the whole of this dogmatic form-world rests, and in the description of natural processes it emerges distinct. It would not be too much, therefore, to say that entropy, as the intellectual form in which the infinite sum of nature-events is assembled as a historical and physiognomic unit, tacitly underlay all physical concept-formation from the outset, so that when it came out (as one day it was bound to come out) it was as a "discovery" of scientific induction claiming "support" from all the other theoretical elements of the system. The more dynamics exhausts its inner possibilities as it nears the goal, the more decidedly the historical characters in the picture come to the front and the more insistently the organic necessity of Destiny asserts itself side by side with the inorganic necessity of Causality, and Direction makes itself felt along with capacity and intensity, the factors of pure extension. The course of this process is marked by the appearance of whole series of daring hypotheses, all of like sort, which are only apparently demanded by experimental results and which in fact world-feeling and mythology imagined as long ago as the Gothic age.

Above all, this is manifested in the bizarre hypotheses of atomic disintegration which elucidate the phenomena of radioactivity, and according to which uranium atoms that have kept their essence unaltered, in spite of all external influences, for millions of years and then suddenly without assignable cause explode, scattering their smallest particles over space with velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Only a few individuals in an aggregate of radioactive atoms are struck by Destiny thus, the neighbours being entirely unaffected. Here too, then, is a picture of history and not "Nature," and although statistical methods here also prove to be necessary, one might almost say that in them mathematical number has been replaced by chronological.

With ideas like these, the mythopoetic force of the Faustian soul is returning to its origins. It was at the outset of the Gothic, just at the time when the first mechanical clocks were being built, that the myth of the world's end, Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, arose. It may be that, like all the reputedly old-German myths Ragnarok (whether in the Voluspa form or as the Christian Muspilli) was modelled more or less on Classical and particularly Christian-Apocalyptic motives. Nevertheless, it is the expression and symbol of the Faustian and of no other soul. The Olympian college is historyless, it knows no becoming, no epochal moments, no aim. But the passionate thrust into distance is Faustian. Force, Will, has an aim, and where there is an aim there is for the inquiring eye an end. That which the perspective of oil-painting expressed by means of the vanishing point, the Baroque park by its pint de vue, and analysis by the »th term of an infinite series — the conclusion, that is, of a willed directedness — assumes here the form of the concept. The Faust of the Second Part is dying, for he has reached his goal. What the myth of Götterdammerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of Entropy, signifies today — world's end as completion of an inwardly necessary evolution.

Although quite erudite, he expresses the very reason why science's ontologies must be revisited and reborn.

The second law of thermodynamics is false. The universe is not winding down to a stop.

But is it possible that science's ontologies will be revisited and reborn? I mean, think of all the destroyers who become more and more daily. Just those who say that they have a solution are mostly the wildest destroyers. And think of all those stupid or absurd theories (philosophies?) circulating here on ILP, for instance.

Since Newton, the assumption of constant mass — the counterpart of constant force — has had uncontested validity. But the Quantum theory of Planck, and the conclusions of Niels Bohr therefrom as to the fine structure of atoms, which experimental experience had rendered necessary, have destroyed this assumption. Every self-contained system possesses, besides kinetic energy, an energy of radiant heat which is inseparable from it and therefore cannot be represented purely by the concept of mass. For if mass is defined by living energy it is ipso facto no longer constant with reference to thermodynamic state. Nevertheless, it is impossible to fit the theory of quanta into the group of hypotheses constituting the " classical" mechanics of the Baroque; moreover, along with the principle of causal continuity, the basis of the Infinitesimal Calculus founded by Leibniz is threatened (1). But, if these are serious enough doubts, the ruthlessly cynical hypothesis of the Relativity theory strikes to the very heart of dynamics. Supported by the experiments of A. A. Michelson, which showed that the velocity of light remains unaffected by the motion of the medium, and prepared mathematically by Lorentz and Minkowski, its specific tendency is to destroy the notion of absolute time. Astronomical discoveries (and here present-day scientists are seriously deceiving themselves) can neither establish nor refute it. "Correct" and "incorrect" are not the criteria whereby such assumptions are to be tested; the question is whether, in the chaos of involved and artificial ideas that has been produced by the innumerable hypotheses of Radioactivity and Thermodynamics, it can hold its own as a useable hypothesis or not. But however this may be, it has abolished the constancy of those •physical quantities into the definition of which time has entered, and unlike the antique statics, the Western dynamics knows only such quantities. Absolute measures of length and rigid bodies are no more. And with this the possibility of absolute quantitative delimitations and therefore the "classical" concept of mass as the constant ratio between force and acceleration fall to the ground — just after the quantum of action, a product of energy and time, had been set up as a new constant. (1) See M. Planck, Entstehung und bisherige Entwicklung der Quantentheorie (192.0), pp. 17-2.5.

If we make it clear to ourselves that the atomic ideas of Rutherford and Bohr (2) signify nothing but this, that the numerical results of observations have suddenly been provided with a picture of a planetary world within the atom, instead of that of atom-swarms hitherto favoured; if we observe how rapidly card-houses of hypothesis are run up nowadays, every contradiction being immediately covered up by a new hurried hypothesis; if we reflect on how little heed is paid to the fact that these images contradict one another and the "classical" Baroque mechanics alike, we cannot but realize that the great style of ideation is at an end and that, as in architecture and the arts of form, a sort of craft-art of hypothesis-building has taken its place. Only our extreme maestria in experimental technique — true child of its century — hides the collapse of the symbolism.

(2) Which in many cases have led to the supposition that the "actual existence" of atoms has now at last been proved — a singular throw-back to the materialism of the preceding generation.

Amongst these symbols of decline, the most conspicuous is the notion of Entropy, which forms the subject of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The first law, that of the conservation of energy, is the plain formulation of the essence of dynamics — not to say of the constitution of the West-European soul, to which Nature is necessarily visible only in the form of a contrapuntal-dynamic causality (as against the static-plastic causality of Aristotle). The basic element of the Faustian world-picture is not the Attitude but the Deed and, mechanically considered, the Process, and this law merely puts the mathematical character of these processes into form as variables and constants. But the Second Law goes deeper, and shows a bias in Nature-happenings which is in no wise imposed a priori by the conceptual fundamentals of dynamics.

Mathematically, Entropy is represented by a quantity which is fixed by the momentary state of a self-contained system of bodies and under all physical and chemical alterations can only increase, never diminish; in the most favourable conditions it remains unchanged. Entropy, like Force and Will, is something which (to anyone for whom this form-world is accessible at all) is inwardly clear and meaningful, but is formulated differently by every different authority and never satisfactorily by any. Here again, the intellect breaks down where the world-feeling demands expression.

Nature-processes in general have been classified as irreversible and reversible, according as entropy is increased or not. In any process of the first kind, free energy is converted into bound energy, and if this dead energy is to be turned once more into living, this can only occur through the simultaneous binding of a further quantum of living energy in some second process; the best-known example is the combustion of coal — that is, the conversion of the living energy stored up in it into heat bound by the gas form of the carbon dioxide, if the latent energy of water is to be translated into steam-pressure and thereafter into motion. It follows that in the world as a whole entropy continually increases; that is, the dynamic system is manifestly approaching to some final state, whatever this may be. Examples of the irreversible processes are conduction of heat, diffusion, friction, emission of light and chemical reactions; of reversible, gravitation, electric oscillations, electromagnetic waves and sound-waves.

What has never hitherto been fully felt, and what leads me to regard the Entropy theory (1850) as the beginning of the destruction of that masterpiece of Western intelligence, the old dynamic physics, is the deep opposition of theory and actuality which is here for the first time introduced into theory itself. The First Law had drawn the strict picture of a causal Nature-happening, but the Second Law by introducing irreversibility has for the first time brought into the mechanical-logical domain a tendency belonging to immediate life and thus in fundamental contradiction with the very essence of that domain.

If the Entropy theory is followed out to its conclusion, it results, firstly, that in theory all processes must be reversible — which is one of the basic postulates of dynamics and is reasserted with all rigour in the law of the Conservation of Energy — but, secondly, that in actuality processes of Nature in their entirety are irreversible. Not even under the artificial conditions of laboratory experiment can the simplest process be exactly reversed, that is, a state once passed cannot be re-established. Nothing is more significant of the present condition of systematics than the introduction of the hypotheses of "elementary disorder" for the purpose of smoothing-out the contradiction between intellectual postulate and actual experience. The "smallest particles" of a body (an image, no more) throughout perform reversible processes, but in actual things the smallest particles are in disorder and mutually interfere; and so the irreversible process that alone is experienced by the observer is linked with increase of entropy by taking the mean probabilities of occurrences. And thus theory becomes a chapter of the Calculus of Probabilities, and in lieu of exact we have statistical methods.

Evidently, the significance of this has passed unnoticed. Statistics belong, like chronology, to the domain of the organic, to fluctuating Life, to Destiny and Incident and not to the world of laws and timeless causality. As everyone knows, statistics serve above all to characterize political and economic, that is, historical, developments. In the "classical" mechanics of Galileo and Newton there would have been no room for them. And if, now, suddenly the contents of that field are supposed to be understood and understandable only statistically and under the aspect of Probability — instead of under that of the a piori exactitude which the Baroque thinkers unanimously demanded — what does it mean? It means that the object of understanding is ourselves. The Nature "known" in this wise is the Nature that we know by way of living experience, that we live in ourselves. What theory asserts (and, being itself, must assert) — to wit, this ideal irreversibility that never happens in actuality — represents a relic of the old severe intellectual form, the great Baroque tradition that had contrapuntal music for twin sister. But the resort to statistics shows that the force that that tradition regulated and made effective is exhausted. Becoming and Become, Destiny and Causality, historical and natural-science elements are beginning to be confused. Formulas of life, growth, age, direction and death are crowding up.

That is what, from this point of view, irreversibility in world-processes has to mean. It is the expression, no longer of the physical t but of genuine historical, inwardly-experienced Time, which is identical with Destiny.

Baroque physics was, root and branch, a strict systematic and remained so for as long as its structure was not racked by theories like these, as long as its field was absolutely free from anything that expressed accident and mere probability. But directly these theories come up, it becomes physiognomic. "The course of the world" is followed out. The idea of the end of the world appears, under the veil of formulas that are no longer in their essence formulas at all. Something Goethian has entered into physics — and if we understand the deeper significance of Goethe's passionate polemic against Newton in the "Farbenlehre" we shall realize the full weight of what this means. For therein intuitive vision was arguing against reason, life against death, creative image against normative law. The critical form-world of Nature-knowledge came out of Nature-feeling, God-feeling, as the evoked contrary. Here, at the end of the Late period, it has reached the maximal distance and is turning to come home.

So, once more, the imaging-power that is the efficient in dynamics conjures up the old great symbol of Faustian man's historical passion, Care — the out-look into the farthest far of past and future, the back-looking study of history, the foreseeing state, the confessions and introspections, the bells that sounded over all our country-sides and measured the passing of Life. The ethos of the word Time, as we alone feel it, as instrumental music alone and no statue- plastic can carry it, is directed upon an aim. This aim has been figured in every life-image that the West has conceived — as the Third Kingdom, as the New Age, as the task of mankind, as the issue of evolution. And it is figured, as the destined end-state of all Faustian "Nature" in Entropy.

Directional feeling, a relation of past and future, is implicit already in the mythic concept of force on which the whole of this dogmatic form-world rests, and in the description of natural processes it emerges distinct. It would not be too much, therefore, to say that entropy, as the intellectual form in which the infinite sum of nature-events is assembled as a historical and physiognomic unit, tacitly underlay all physical concept-formation from the outset, so that when it came out (as one day it was bound to come out) it was as a "discovery" of scientific induction claiming "support" from all the other theoretical elements of the system. The more dynamics exhausts its inner possibilities as it nears the goal, the more decidedly the historical characters in the picture come to the front and the more insistently the organic necessity of Destiny asserts itself side by side with the inorganic necessity of Causality, and Direction makes itself felt along with capacity and intensity, the factors of pure extension. The course of this process is marked by the appearance of whole series of daring hypotheses, all of like sort, which are only apparently demanded by experimental results and which in fact world-feeling and mythology imagined as long ago as the Gothic age.

Above all, this is manifested in the bizarre hypotheses of atomic disintegration which elucidate the phenomena of radioactivity, and according to which uranium atoms that have kept their essence unaltered, in spite of all external influences, for millions of years and then suddenly without assignable cause explode, scattering their smallest particles over space with velocities of thousands of kilometres per second. Only a few individuals in an aggregate of radioactive atoms are struck by Destiny thus, the neighbours being entirely unaffected. Here too, then, is a picture of history and not "Nature," and although statistical methods here also prove to be necessary, one might almost say that in them mathematical number has been replaced by chronological.

With ideas like these, the mythopoetic force of the Faustian soul is returning to its origins. It was at the outset of the Gothic, just at the time when the first mechanical clocks were being built, that the myth of the world's end, Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, arose. It may be that, like all the reputedly old-German myths Ragnarok (whether in the Voluspa form or as the Christian Muspilli) was modelled more or less on Classical and particularly Christian-Apocalyptic motives. Nevertheless, it is the expression and symbol of the Faustian and of no other soul. The Olympian college is historyless, it knows no becoming, no epochal moments, no aim. But the passionate thrust into distance is Faustian. Force, Will, has an aim, and where there is an aim there is for the inquiring eye an end. That which the perspective of oil-painting expressed by means of the vanishing point, the Baroque park by its pint de vue, and analysis by the »th term of an infinite series — the conclusion, that is, of a willed directedness — assumes here the form of the concept. The Faust of the Second Part is dying, for he has reached his goal. What the myth of Götterdammerung signified of old, the irreligious form of it, the theory of Entropy, signifies today — world's end as completion of an inwardly necessary evolution.

Although quite erudite, he expresses the very reason why science's ontologies must be revisited and reborn.

The second law of thermodynamics is false. The universe is not winding down to a stop.

But is it possible that science's ontologies will be revisited and reborn? I mean, think of all the destroyers who become more and more daily. Just those who say that they have a solution are mostly the wildest destroyers. And think of all those stupid or absurd theories (philosophies?) circulating here on ILP, for instance.

I guess, you mean all this narcistic "theories", kinds of solipsim (extreme subjectivism) and nihilism. =>=>=>=>

They fit the wildest destroyers as well as the stupidities or absurdities you are talking about.

Meno_ wrote:

Alf wrote:But is it possible that science's ontologies will be revisited and reborn? I mean, think of all the destroyers who become more and more daily. Just those who say that they have a solution are mostly the wildest destroyers. And think of all those stupid or absurd theories (philosophies?) circulating here on ILP, for instance.

It's not only possible, it is very probable.

You seem to be sure about that. Right?

"Science" means "natural science" in the first place, and "natura science" means "physics" in the frist place. So how could its ontologies be revisited and reborn accordíng to you?

Natural knowledge is basically binary before it develops into more sophisticated uses, or functions from the existential requirements of knowledge, such as flight or flight. Physics derives perhaps, from the literally physical manifestations of knowledge, and that is why it is referentially effective

It s ontology has such referent, and it has a probability of recurrence based.on existential recurrence, rather then primarily a thematic one to physics as a secondary development.

You are right, its a probabilistic hypothesis, arguable both ways, but not as deeply divisive as for instance, the familiar question were to be asked: What comes first, the chicken or the egg.

In any case, the problem therefore, is not settled, yet does not rise to the level of being paradoxical. It tends to gravitate toward a semantic loophole, but I that might be diversive , to cover for the latent inversion of knowledge and its effective entropy, or closure.

The literality of hypothesis breaks down as Your answer suggests it might, but I do have some reference, although equally suggestive.

My only defense is based on a more probable scenario , and with probability ranging minimally from nearly a 50-50 scenario..

For this You may challenge with a more narrow focus toward an effect of demonstrative physical science criteria, but the ontology or metaphysical basis suggests more then merely a semantic criteria

I do wish it were the other way, and that is what ultimately I believe, but demonstraticaly, it's more conjecture in with a categorically imperative, then its underlying causation. Needless to say, science foundations may be revisited and even revised, over again. There are no present statistical showings whereby, the shidtnfrom probable to more certainty may not change the rules themselves.

Every potential to affect consumes itself as it creates affect. And every affect creates an equal potential to affect as it propagates. Since there is nothing else, no amount of affectance can ever be lost nor gained. And such is yet another reason that the universe is necessarily infinite and without beginning nor end.

Clarify, Verify, Instill, and Reinforce the Perception of Hopes and Threats unto Anentropic HarmonyElseFrom THIS age of sleep, Homo-sapien shall never awake.

The Wise gather together to help one another in EVERY aspect of living.

You are always more insecure than you think, just not by what you think.The only absolute certainty is formed by the absolute lack of alternatives.It is not merely "do what works", but "to accomplish what purpose in what time frame at what cost".As long as the authority is secretive, the population will be subjugated.

Amid the lack of certainty, put faith in the wiser to believe.Devil's Motto: Make it look good, safe, innocent, and wise.. until it is too late to choose otherwise.

The Real God ≡ The reason/cause for the Universe being what it is = "The situation cannot be what it is and also remain as it is"..

Alf wrote:But is it possible that science's ontologies will be revisited and reborn? I mean, think of all the destroyers who become more and more daily. Just those who say that they have a solution are mostly the wildest destroyers. And think of all those stupid or absurd theories (philosophies?) circulating here on ILP, for instance.

I guess, you mean all this narcistic "theories", kinds of solipsim (extreme subjectivism) and nihilism. =>=>=>=>

They fit the wildest destroyers as well as the stupidities or absurdities you are talking about.

When it comes to the internet, they are just trolls, on top of it all: stupid trolls.

"Eat my narcistic interpretation or die" is what those trolls are saying all the time.

The second law of thermodynamics states that the total entropy of an isolated system always increases over time, or remains constant in ideal cases where the system is in a steady state or undergoing a reversible process. The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.

That is absolutely false.

Arminius wrote: The increase in entropy accounts for the irreversibility of natural processes, and the asymmetry between future and past.

That is also false. Entropy is not a causal agency, thus cannot "account for" anything. Entropy is merely a measure of what is present, not why it is that way.

Entropy ≡ the measure of the randomness of energy in a system.

That is also false. Entropy is not defined by the state of energy, but of pattern or distribution in space (of anything). An example from Wiki:

In thermodynamics, entropy (usual symbol S) is a measure of the number of microscopic configurations that correspond to a thermodynamic system in a state specified by certain macroscopic variables. For example, gas in a container with known volume, pressure, and temperature could have an enormous number of possible configurations of the individual gas molecules, and which configuration the gas is actually in may be regarded as random.

An example of the failing of such a law would be what happens to a large spherical chamber of mixed gases out in space over time. Over time, the gases will separate with the heavier gases in the center of the chamber. The end steady state situation is less random than it began - lower entropy.

Both gravity and life (among others) defeats the "Second Law of Thermodynamics". It is actually not a "law", but rather a natural propensity. "Maxwell's Demon" was an abstract concept used to show how it wasn't a law very long ago. My own "KD project" more physically proved it back in 1972. There have been a variety of systems that over-come randomness, "trapping systems", and also increase energy state when energy is allowed to randomly enter the system. Subatomic particles defeat the law when first growing and resist the law while maintaining. Objects in space can gradually collect over time due to gravitational migration, becoming less random - lower entropy.

"Yes, Virginia. There really is such a thing as Anti-entropy and Anentropy."

Man I have to give you props for that! You come across as venomous at times with your unprovoked ad hominous attacks (wish you'd quit that), but that's one helluva ground breaking answer! So why isn't that accepted by the mainstream and taught? It seems a matter of common sense for the very fact we're here that the universe is perfectly capable of organizing itself.

The greatest error is merely in calling it a "law".

Yeah no shit. Physics inherited its terminology from religion. I call them observed regularities.

James S Saint wrote:Every potential to affect consumes itself as it creates affect. And every affect creates an equal potential to affect as it propagates. Since there is nothing else, no amount of affectance can ever be lost nor gained. And such is yet another reason that the universe is necessarily infinite and without beginning nor end.

But we still have to disagree there because if the universe were infinite, there surely couldn't be any such thing as conservation of energy.

Has no one considered Rayleigh-Jeans? You can pump in as much Energy as you want but if it’s is not of sufficiently high frequency it will simply be absorbed or radiated out. Note: the absorbed energy does not add mass. I think it was Bohr that needed to change the equation.

Ed3 wrote:Has no one considered Rayleigh-Jeans? You can pump in as much Energy as you want but if it’s is not of sufficiently high frequency it will simply be absorbed or radiated out. Note: the absorbed energy does not add mass. I think it was Bohr that needed to change the equation.

Good point, but I suppose if the energy went right through, then it wasn't pumped in.

In a conserved energy model, the total input energy = total escaped energy + total absorbed energy.

In these experiments, the total input energy is greater than the total escaped energy. This means that some energy must have been absorbed. However, if the frequency of the total absorbed energy is not equal to certain allowable quantities, then the total absorbed energy is simply lost.

What one would expect is that the Hydrogen atom would simply become agitated in a continuous manner to account for the absorbed energy. But except for these special cases, the Hydrogen atom simply acts as an energy sink – the energy simply goes away.

The equation is no longer balanced and the law of conservation energy is no longer valid.

Random babble:

I think that this is historically a big deal. Bohr’s insight into this matter, i.e. changing the equation to only allow for quantum inputs may have been the first use of quantum mechanics.

Another totally random thought is that in one of his popular books, I think it was QED, Feynman talks about how sad it was when he explained to his father that some energy simply goes away. His father paid for his education and now he must dissolution his father of a fundamental belief in Physics.

In a conserved energy model, the total input energy = total escaped energy + total absorbed energy.

In these experiments, the total input energy is greater than the total escaped energy. This means that some energy must have been absorbed. However, if the frequency of the total absorbed energy is not equal to certain allowable quantities, then the total absorbed energy is simply lost.

What one would expect is that the Hydrogen atom would simply become agitated in a continuous manner to account for the absorbed energy. But except for these special cases, the Hydrogen atom simply acts as an energy sink – the energy simply goes away.

The equation is no longer balanced and the law of conservation energy is no longer valid.

Energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation can only affect charge as a property of "particles" in relation to the mass of the particle and the strength and distance of the bond (which acts as a spring in mass resonance).

Absorption of energy is when the molecule resonates and the resonant oscillations produce a 180 degree phase-shifted wave that cancels the original. Technically, the wave does not stop, but travels in tandem with the 180 degree wave in cancellation, but the energy was imparted to the molecule and so it's called "absorption".

Now if a particle is too heavy or the bond too weak, then a high-frequency wave will not be able to cause the particle to oscillate and will pass right through minimally-affected. If the particle is light or the bond strength is strong, then a low-frequency wave will have no effect.

If you could perform an audio sweep with a sinewave generator in the presence of a wineglass, you'll eventually find the resonant frequency of the glass and the only point where the glass absorbs significant energy. Otherwise, the energy goes right through.

So, all energy passes through, but at points of "coupling" at resonant frequencies there is a cancellation wave produced that allows for apparent absorption of energy.

I think that the critical point here is whether or not the input energy is equal to the output energy, if the intervening material is not excited.

From my memory, the answer is that output energy is less than the input energy. I could be wrong.

Are you stating categorically that the output energy and the input energy are equal in this case?

It might also be possible that you are stating that you cannot measure the output energy. I would be skeptical about that point, but open to persuasion.

Thanks Ed3

You should definitely hang around more because I really like your style of conversation! And I wish others would endeavor to copy you

I think we need to define what "input" and "output" mean. Does input mean the amount of energy that interacts or the amount of energy produced by the thing that is inputting the energy?

Are you stating categorically that the output energy and the input energy are equal in this case?

I think it depends on how you choose to view a wave that has been cancelled. One view is that the two waves that cancel each other travel together and the other view is that they cancel and cease to exist. The problem is that the wave that leads and causes the resonant re-radiation is ahead in time by a little bit and therefore couldn't possibly be cancelled by an effect that it caused. So it seems no matter what, some energy is going straight through.

The next problem is what do you mean by output? All energy is eventually going to leave through cooling. Even if you had 2 objects in steady state temperature, they are still keeping each other warm by radiating their own heat to each other. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy in molecules which are generating electromagnetic radiation by virtue of the motion of charges in the molecules. So even if something is a steady temperature, it's still losing its original energy, but gaining new energy from the environment to offset it. Because everything is above absolute zero, everything is in motion and consequently losing energy.

Before I can make concrete statements, I suppose I'd need good definitions to make statements about Maybe it's fair to say that all the energy goes straight through, but some of it is delayed in time from our perspective, but not from the perspective of the energy itself. From the perspective of light from the farthest galaxy, 13 billion years was an instantaneous event. From the perspective of energy/light, all time is instant, and so we can say that all the energy inputted goes right through instantly.

The Conservation Laws leave out one critical thing, that energy and information are interchangeable and indistinguishable in specific contexts, begging the question of exactly what is being conserved. For example, Finnish physicists recently constructed the first autonomous version of Maxwell's Demon that sorts electrons according to their charges without expending any energy in the process. Its not a source of free energy, but its as if they had simply waved a magic wand and empowered their otherwise humble copper transistor to convince unruly electrons to sort out their own differences for a change and make themselves more productive. The Quantum Zeno Effect is another example, where a watched pot of entangled quanta will never boil or change in any way whatsoever, begging the question of does it represent energy or information.

Fixed Cross wrote:If the universe is infinite, then the amount of energy in it must be infinite.Since that is not a discrete quantity, the law of conservation of energy seems problematic.

Assuming 42 is as good an answer as we'll ever get, the universe can be considered simultaneously finite and infinite. Among other things, this would explain why space-time is flatter than Relativity proposes and why astronomers have recently proposed that some of what they are observing seems to only be explainable as "something appearing out of nothing". They are encountering the same problem physicists did with quantum mechanics, and their observations should only grow more inexplicable over time. The reason physicists encountered it first with tiny quanta, is only because they are easier to study in the laboratory.

I do think that energy comes out of "nothing" at the smallest scale only.This "nothing", we might say the backdrop to our ontological models, can not be considered as a pure empty negative, as it underlies the possibility of existence.

This is a most intricate subject that brings us from physics into the discovery that our epistemology excludes proper logical closure.

Proposal:What is conserved is structurally integrity. Energy is being conserved as a function of it.

I do think that energy comes out of "nothing" at the smallest scale only.This "nothing", we might say the backdrop to our ontological models, can not be considered as a pure empty negative, as it underlies the possibility of existence.

This is a most intricate subject that brings us from physics into the discovery that our epistemology excludes proper logical closure.

Proposal:What is conserved is structurally integrity. Energy is being conserved as a function of it.

That's along the lines of John Wheeler, Bucky Fuller, and Constructal Theory, but they are too classical to even begin to describe the situation. You need to think more fundamentally in terms of metaphors, with what's missing from this picture, merely being a metaphor for what it contains. Light has no demonstrable meaning outside of the context of its own shadow. Everything can be thought of as expressing different contradictions, and organized from the least contradictory appearing to the most. Time itself is so mysterious and contradictory appearing in cases like the quantum Zeno Effect because it is a more fundamental issue.

It is inevitable that once you observe (value) an event it becomes part of your system. Once something is part of our system you are part of its. What we don't realize or aren't taught enough is that when we observe, we only observe very tiny fractions of potentially ascribable properties. Our very observation is a selecting and limiting, tying down, a valuing in pre-existent terms.

((Valuing is more or less the opposite of being conscious. Consciousness floats on valuing but if a particle were to be conscious its responses would be radically less "astute", immediate, necessary. A particle would become moral and hesitant. Meaning only that consciousness is a slow amalgamate of elementary valuings))

Humans have thought in term of isolated "bits" forever, but there is no such thing.The very existence of a particle implies with absolute certainty that it is tied to the approach of other particles.

On the behaviour of light; much is clarified when one stops thinking of a photon a a particle or object, and stops considering light and the speed of light as two separate issues. As Ive come to realize, light is its speed. There isn't anything else to it. It is potentiality on the move, and this moving is what allows it to relate to mass through converting itself into spinning self-relating potential rather than a straight line of potential.

Back to self-valuing logic, or value ontology as it has been termed the past 7 years; it can be seen as the logic underlying both Relativity and QM. Both are actually a result of the same necessity; the only difference is that one can not transpose an observer into the reference frame of a subatomic quantum. "God plays dice" in that no one else is in there but the sub-substantial instance of behaviour, no one is there to interpret the momentum and location in terms of each other, except the instance itself.